Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on House GOP: 'There are legitimate white supremacist sympathizers'
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined All In With Chris Hayes Wednesday night and she tore into the new House Republican Caucus when asked how it differs from the previous one. Ocasio-Cortez believes new members are much more extreme.
“There are legitimate white supremacist sympathizers that sit at the heart and at the core of the Republican Caucus in the House of Representatives,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Among the new Republican members is Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who adheres to QAnon conspiracy theories. In the past, she has advocated violence against prominent Democrats, harassed Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg and attempted to force Muslim representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to be sworn in on the Bible.
Then there’s Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a gun enthusiast who clashed with Capitol police after she set off a metal detector, and is reportedly QAnon friendly. Many of her colleagues in the House also suspect her of aiding those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Ocasio-Cortez believes that the House Republican Caucus moved on from acting in the best interest of former President Donald Trump to acting in the best interest of something much more extreme, and that members act without fear of consequence.
“There are no consequences in the Republican Caucus for violence. There's no consequence for racism. No consequence for misogyny. No consequence for insurrection. And no consequence means that they condone it. It means that that silence is acceptance,” Ocasio-Cortez said, “and they want it because they know that it is a core animating political energy for them. And this is extremely dangerous. An extremely dangerous threshold that we have crossed. Because we are now away from acting out of fealty to their president that they had in the Oval Office, and now we are talking about fealty to white supremacist organizations as a political tool.”
The Oregon Republican Party recently claimed that the insurrection at the Capitol was carried out by leftists in an effort to harm Trump, and the Arizona Republican Party censured several members for not properly supporting Trump, including the governor for not supporting the efforts to overturn the state’s results in the presidential election. As state Republican Parties such as these become more extreme, Ocasio-Cortez believes that the Party as a whole is headed in the wrong direction.
“For Republicans that are in that Caucus that are unwilling to hold that accountable or to distance themselves from it, we really, really need to ask ourselves what they are evolving into,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Because this is no longer about a party of limited government, this is about something much more nefarious.”
All In With Chris Hayes airs weeknights at 8 p.m. on MSNBC.
Watch Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talk about ‘a considerable amount’ of lawmakers who ‘still don’t feel safe around other members of Congress’:
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